The Prisoner Squat Exercise is a great way to strengthen your quadriceps and glutes while activating your core and back.
The Prisoner Squat Exercise forms part of the Golf Strength and Endurance series of innovative and dynamic exercises that are designed to efficiently increase your stabilising strength – supporting proper body alignment, movement patterns, and energy transfer within the golf swing, and helping to prevent injuries.
Figure 1. Prisoner Squat Exercise Video.
Steps
- Start by standing tall with your feet shoulder-width apart. Place your fingers behind your head and pull your elbows and shoulders back.
- Initiating the movement with your hips, squat back and down until the tops of your thighs are parallel to the ground.
- Pause, then slowly return to a standing position by pushing through your hips.
- Repeat for the desired number of repetitions.
Do not let your knees slide forwards past your toes, or collapse to the inside, during this exercise. Your torso should stay as upright as possible. Don’t let your lower back round.
Keep your weight on your heels, not your toes, for the entire movement. Your knees should stay over the centres of your feet as you squat.
You should feel it working your glutes and quadriceps, and to a lesser extent your hamstrings and hip adductors.
Variation
There are a number of other squat exercises in the Golf Loopy Train like a Champion System that offer a variety of challenges, you can see them all by clicking here.
How Will It Benefit Your Golf Swing?
To perform a great golf swing, you need enough leg strength to transfer your body weight onto your lead leg and to extend your hips up through impact. This creates a huge amount of force against the ground, which in turn is applied back into the your golf swing by the ground, a phenomenon known as Ground Reaction Force (GRF).
Preparing your muscles and nervous system to effectively use your legs during the golf swing is crucial for generating power.
If you have any questions or comments about this or other articles on Golf Loopy, please send us an email.
You May Also Like…
Golf Performance Programmes – the most effective golf-specific fitness regimens on the planet, guaranteed to make you a better golfer!
There are a number of other golf-specific strength and endurance exercises in the Golf Loopy Train like a Champion System.
The Golf Loopy Perfect Warm Up, an exercise routine that has been scientifically designed to prepare your mind and body for playing golf to the best of your ability in just 7 minutes.
Introduction to the Swing like a Champion System.
Golf Anatomy and Kinesiology, a collection of articles describing the roles of the muscles involved in the golf swing.
